Daivi Leadership

The Daivi Leadership model is based on the daivi sampad discussed in the sixteenth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita. It is also based on the life of Krishna as a leader and on his teachings. Besides these, in developing the Daivi model of leadership, I have used insights from the wisdom of the Vedas and the Upanishads as well as from Indian leadership philosophy as discussed in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the Arthashastra, Tirukkural and other ancient Indian literary works. The Daivi model of leadership is a contrast to the Asuri model of leadership, which I have developed from the asuri sampad as discussed by the Bhagavad Gita and leadership thoughts in the texts mentioned above. These two twin leadership models form the extreme ends of a continuum, the Daivi Leadership being the best and the Asuri Leadership being the worst. In the ultimate analysis, Daivi Leadership focuses on light that ennobles the life of all people involved, whereas Asuri Leadership focuses on power for its practitioners, utilized for dominating others and creating wealth through exploitation. Eventually however, Asuri Leadership leads to all-round misery.

I have been teaching both the Daivi Leadership model and the Asuri Leadership model for the last couple of years at XLRI School of Business and Human Resources, Jamshedpur. These models are taught in detail as part of my course in Indian Philosophy for Leadership Excellence. What follows is a brief summary of the Daivi Leadership model.

The Bhagavad Gita lists daivi sampad as fearlessness, purity of heart, generosity, sacrifice, compassion, absence of covetousness, vigour, fortitude, etc. Asuri Sampad is described as hypocrisy, arrogance, self-conceit, anger, harshness, ignorance, etc.

As other types of leaders have, the Daivi Leader too has a powerful vision and mission, which in the case of the daivi leader is a noble one. He is passionate about his mission and his commitment to his mission is total. The Daivi Leader shows the willingness to sacrifice his name and his life itself at the altar of his cause.

While the Daivi Leader is highly moral, his morality is often different from that of the society to which he belongs because he functions from a higher moral plane. He also raises his followers too to a higher moral plane, as the transformational leader does.

The Daivi Leader shows the same deep commitment to his followers as he shows to his mission and never abandons them. He treats their needs as their needs and their problems as his problems. He sees his happiness in their happiness, his success in their success. He considers as good not what pleases him but what is good for his followers and sees their welfare as his welfare. His care for his people is that of a pregnant woman to the child in her womb. Just as she constantly thinks about that child and lives for it and does nothing that will harm it even if she loves to do it for herself, he too lives for his followers and does nothing that will harm them.

The Daivi Leader has all the qualities that the Bhagavad Gita lists as daivi sampad and suffers from none of the evil qualities the Gita speaks of as asuri sampad. He is highly autonomous and has both great strength and vulnerability. He does not believe in hiding behind masks or playing helpless but accepts himself as he is.

In spite of problems facing him, the Daivi Leader retains his self-mastery. This helps him in retaining his serenity, which is a basic requirement for clear perceptions, unerring intuitions and right decision making. He has the energy and freshness of youth, has the quality of flowing, is childlike and is highly creative. Because of his originality and creativity, he is an expert in thinking outside the box.

For the Daivi Leader, his mission comes before his ego. For this reason, he is willing to accept injuries to his ego in the process of achieving his mission. He is also willing to serve, without occupying positions of authority, as the servant leader does. He can let go of things, which makes him very flexible where required. Because of his flexibility, he knows when to be firm and when to yield. He knows when to assert himself and when to gracefully surrender in the interest of his mission. Though he is generally gentle with people because of his sensitivity, he can also be tough if the situation requires it.

While being passionately in love with the world and life, the Daivi Leader also knows how to withdraw into himself and remain contented in the solitude of his inner sanctuary.

He is interested in what the Upanishads call preyas – immediate satisfaction, short term goals – but never loses sight of shreyas – long term good, which is his real interest. In the same way he is interested in both abhyudaya and nisshreyasa – prosperity in the material sense and prosperity in the spiritual sense. He sees life as a sacred yajna, a holy sacrifice, and looks upon his leadership too as such. He has both the passion of a devotee and his humility. In work he is a karma yogi.

The Daivi Leader trusts people and in their essential goodness. Because of his trust for people, he creates an atmosphere of trust in his organization. The Daivi Leader’s presence is that of a sattvic person – unlike the tamasic person who sucks up your energy and leaves you drained, and unlike the rajasic person who both energises you and makes you restless, the Daivi Leader energises you and at the same time help you reach your inner serenity. Like Krishna in the Mahabharata, at his highest level, he is gunatita, beyond all the three gunas.

Nyasa – the sense of detachment and renunciation – is part of the Daivi Leader’s attitude towards people and life. While he passionately cares for his people and is intensely concerned about them, he is not carried away by his care and concern. He is able to detach himself from them and is able to look at them objectively and make clear assessment of them and their situations.

The Daivi Leader is motivated more by the need to give than by the need to get. He is not driven by deficiency motivation. At the organizational and at the personal level, he has the three purusharthas of dharma, artha and kama – virtue, wealth and pleasures – balanced.

Speaking of the effectiveness of Daivi Leadership, ancient India had achieved great economic, cultural, educational, ethical, philosophical and spiritual heights and high standards of living for its people. This was possible because of the Daivi Leadership it practiced.

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Masters Who Wear Masks

The Man in the Iron Mask [1998 version], is a movie I saw again on TV recently. It is a movie I love much for many things, including the invaluable lessons it gives in leadership, a subject I have been teaching for the last few years at XLRI School of Business, Jamshedpur. These lessons the movie gives us are both in the best kind of leadership, which I have been teaching as Daivi Leadership, and the worst kind, which I have been taching as Asuri Leadership. The two models of leadership are based on the Daivi Sampad and the Asuri Sampad that the Bhagavad Gita speaks about.

In the movie young prince Philip is the man in the iron mask, having forced to live with an iron mask on his face practically all his life, locked up in a dungeon in the notorious Bastille. However, towards the end of the movie, Phillip tells a dying D’Artagnan, “It is you who have been living under a mask.” Phillip is right; D’Artagnan has lived all his life wearing a mask on his life, in fact more than one mask.

But in wearing a mask, D’Artagnan was just being like any one of us. Most of us live all our lives wearing masks. That is, most of us ordinary mortals.

But it is not unusual for a great enlightened spiritual master to hide himself behind a mask either.

One such awakened master from the fictional world is Donald Shimoda in Richard Bach’s Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah. “He learned of this world in the public schools of Indiana,” says Illusions. “But the Master had learnings from other lands and other schools, from other lives that he had lived.”

The master believed that every man was a son of God and had the power to help others. Other people see his power and come to him to be healed of their troubles and diseases. However, soon his fame spreads and large crowds always throng in front of the shops and garages where works as a mechanic – crowds of people who seek his learning and his touch, and long that his shadow might fall upon them and change their lives.

When the crowds become too big, he goes to the countryside where too people come to him. They start calling him a Messiah and worker of miracles. He teaches them that “within each of us lies the power of our consent to health and to sickness, to riches and to poverty, to freedom and to slavery. It is we who control these, and not another,” but people tell him he is different and they cannot become what he is, cannot do what he can.

He tells them a story. “Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. The current of the river swept silently over them all – young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self.

Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth.

But one creature said at last, “I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom.”

The other creatures laughed and said, “Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom.”

But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.

Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.

And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, “See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!”

And the one carried in the current said, “I am no more Messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure.”

But they cried the more, “Saviour!” all the while clinging to the rocks, and when they looked again he was gone and they were left alone making legends of a Saviour.”

What the Messiah tells the crowds is the same truth that enlightened masters from across the world have been saying throughout history. We have all the power we can imagine and much more. We are the source of all the power in the universe. The truth is, in the words of the Maitreyi Upanishad, “I am me; and I am the supreme. I am Brahman, and I am the origin of all. I am the guru of the whole world and I am all over the universe. Such am I.”

“ahamasmi paraschasmi brahmasmi prabhavo’smyaham; sarvalokaguruschasmi sarvaloke’smi so’smyaham.”

When the master realizes that the crowd is not interested in waking up and in realizing the truth of what they are, but only in clinging to their ignorance and ignorance-born ways, that they want him to heal them and solve their problems for them forever, he decides to leave. “I quit,” he announces once day. He then goes through the crowds and leaves them, returning to the everyday world of men and machines. He has now put on the mask of ordinariness, and as far as the outside world is considered, he is one of them.

Says Osho, speaking about masters who wear masks to hide themselves from people: “Sufis do that; they have a very strange method of becoming invisible. They remain visible – they remain in the world, they don’t escape from it – but deliberately they create a certain milieu around them, so that people stop coming to them. Crowds, curious people, stupid people, simply stop coming to them; the Sufis don’t exist for them, they forget all about them. This has been an ancient method of the Sufis so that they can work with their disciples.”

In the following postings of on this topic, we shall explore some real-world awakened masters from across different cultures. We shall begin with Lai-Khur, a little known Sufi Saint who was one of the greatest ever.

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Continued on Masters Who Wear Masks 2